An audit of the Wayne County Sheriff's Office recommends cutting the number of take-home vehicles and tightening oversight of fuel cards. / Kathleen Galligan/Detroit Free Press

Written by

Marlon A.Walker

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

The Wayne County Sheriff’s Office needs to reduce the number of take-home vehicles issued to employees and have better oversight of charges being made on the department’s fuel cards.

That was the finding of the county’s Office of Legislative Auditor General, presented Wednesday to the County Commission’s audit committee.

Officials with the auditor’s office said the lack of organized receipts on spending meant an unknown amount of money could have been spent on unapproved items. The report recommended, among other things, that the department reduce the number of take-home vehicles by assessing the employees’ specific duties, and no longer allowing independent contractors access to fleet vehicles.

Suzanne Hall, Sheriff Benny Napoleon’s director of administration, said only one independent contractor currently has a car — Director of Jails and Courts Jeriel Heard — and that the vehicle is necessary for him to do his job.

“We have deficiencies ... and we’ve put some things in place to address this,” Hall said. “We do have a vehicle policy in place, and we have not met all those standards in that policy. We’re making changes there.”

The sheriff’s office has a fleet of 232 vehicles. How many of those are take-home vehicles was unknown Wednesday. Hall said the sheriff’s office has 58 such vehicles. The audit said there are 76. A sheriff’s office staffer told Hall the number is 84. Paula Bridges, Napoleon’s press secretary, said Wednesday afternoon that there are 69 take-home vehicles.

Bridges said with department employees living throughout the county, time lost going to get an official vehicle from downtown could be critical to residents’ safety.

“The sheriff believes greatly that (employees) should be prepared to respond to any emergency that comes up,” she said about the number of take-home vehicles.

Bridges added that there have been “thousands” of instances in the past few years where someone has had to respond to a breaking incident.

For the 2012 fiscal year, auditors found $756,106 was spent on county-issued BP fuel charge cards. Of that, $590,522 was for fuel and $265,584 was for non-fuel purchases. Hall said those include maintenance charges — including oil changes — for the vehicles.

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According to auditors, one person assigned two credit cards spent $4,583 on the card between Aug. 6 and Dec. 5, 2012. Of that, $1,295 was for non-fuel purchases and $3,288 was for fuel, an average of $822 per month on gas alone.

Auditors estimated that the car had been driven about 14,545 miles during the four-month period.

Auditor General Willie Mayo said lots of miscellaneous charges were found that could not be identified. In one instance, he said, there was a candy bar among the charges. In many cases, credit card receipts were not received, and gas logs were incomplete, making it hard to know whether fuel was actually being used for fleet vehicles.

“I would caution the sheriff’s office to go back and look at the ... charges that are not identified and get a hand on (finding out what they were),” he said.

Hall said employees either have to submit a report, or she recommends the card is shut off.

The BP account was deactivated three times for unpaid balances during the examination period, which included the 2012 fiscal year and several months of the 2013 year, which could have hindered the department’s ability to do its mandated function — transporting detainees.

“In good (financial) times, we probably wouldn’t have these conversations,” Commissioner Ray Basham, chair of the audit committee, said about the take-home vehicles. “But if you look at the savings we could have …”